Will teaming work for me?

[bradly1101]

The second system in my sig. is my HTPC workhorse. It records up to six HD channels from networked tuners over a single gigabit connection. While doing this the system might also be streaming from HBO Go or Netflix, and possibly be streaming out at 1080 to a tablet.

All this works fine right now over one of this PC's 1G ethernet ports, but it has two on the motherboard that support teaming (Realtek 8111C) through a very hard to find utility (but I have it).

On extremely rare situations a stream will stutter, and I wonder if enabling teaming (with a smart switch) will keep things even smoother. I know it's meant for servers, but that one pipe has to do a lot.

 

[sdifox]

Are you streaming from the hdhomerun or from the i7 920? What switch are you on? Does your router support vlan?

 

[Mushkins]

Teaming at home is totally unnecessary and will not address your issue. Even doing all that, there's absolutely no way you're saturating a Gigabit connection. More than likely it's a CPU or WAN bottleneck that causes the occasional stutter.

 

[sdifox]

Teaming at home is totally unnecessary and will not address your issue. Even doing all that, there's absolutely no way you're saturating a Gigabit connection. More than likely it's a CPU or WAN bottleneck that causes the occasional stutter.

I would separate the traffic, the hdhomerun on one vlan and nic 2 and regular traffic on main vlan and nic 1 . That should help.

I just don't know how effective the Realtek teaming is.

 

[JackMDS]

Teaming in the sense that it is described above is like thinking that if you put a $10 bill into a bigger purse it will turn into $100.

 

[Mike Swenson]

If you team the Gig ports on your PC, then you would need to setup a LAG (port channel on the switch) for the two ports. IF your switch does not support LAGs, you could consider a Cisco SG200 or Sg300 switch. Also, I agree the Issue may be with the router / WAN. Your could add a rule to the router to set the priority for the streaming port to the highest priority. Giving the stream priority over other communication.

Best Regards,
Mike

 

[bradly1101]

Are you streaming from the hdhomerun or from the i7 920?

Both. The HD Homeruns stream into this box, and this box also transcodes video and streams it out to the router (then wirelessly to devices). If I team won't those each be handled by a separate port of this box?

What switch are you on?

Currently I'm just on a 4-port wireless router (Netgear Nighthawk X4). But I was considering adding the Netgear 108T using its LACP teaming function, which the Realtek ports support.

Does your router support vlan?

Yes I believe it does, but I'm not a big networking expert (thank goodness it all seems to just work) and I've never set up a VLAN, but as I understand it in this application it would serve to isolate different areas of the network, but since the PC is the recording device and the streaming-out/transcoding device, doesn't it all have to go up and down a single pipe eventually?

 

[bradly1101]

Teaming at home is totally unnecessary and will not address your issue. Even doing all that, there's absolutely no way you're saturating a Gigabit connection. More than likely it's a CPU or WAN bottleneck that causes the occasional stutter.

Thanks I wish there was a way to know. Sometimes it will stutter in a TV program or a Netflix stream, and although rare, I wonder at its source.

This HTPC was upgraded within the last couple of years when we got an HD TV set, and I tried to make sure every component was more than what was needed, but expecting zero hiccups was unreasonable. The network connection was all I could see improving, but that could be for naught.

 

[sdifox]

Both. The HD Homeruns stream into this box, and this box also transcodes video and streams it out to the router (then wirelessly to devices). If I team won't those each be handled by a separate port of this box?



Currently I'm just on a 4-port wireless router (Netgear Nighthawk X4). But I was considering adding the Netgear 108T using its LACP teaming function, which the Realtek ports support.



Yes I believe it does, but I'm not a big networking expert (thank goodness it all seems to just work) and I've never set up a VLAN, but as I understand it in this application it would serve to isolate different areas of the network, but since the PC is the recording device and the streaming-out/transcoding device, doesn't it all have to go up and down a single pipe eventually?

What I meant is that hd homerun only talks to your htpc and not to the streaming clients. WMC serves the content out to your tablet or whatever.

if that is the case, you can isolate the traffic by configuring vlan. Vlan 1 is your regular network with nic1. Vlan 2 is nic 2 and the hd homeruns.

 

[bradly1101]

I would separate the traffic, the hdhomerun on one vlan and nic 2 and regular traffic on main vlan and nic 1 . That should help.

Hmmm. The HD Homeruns need to be accessed on the whole network (there's one main HTPC, but other clients exist on Android as well as it being nice to record to any PC. Right now the router handles all that. Could I separate them on a single port like that and still get access across the network? Again I'm not so great with Network stuff.

I just don't know how effective the Realtek teaming is.

If useful in my scenario, I could always upgrade to a two-port Intel NIC.

 

[Mushkins]

Bandwidth is like RAM: you can prioritize traffic, make VLANs, do all the NIC teaming you want, but it's not going to make a lick of performance difference unless you're already saturating what you have available.

Odds are those stutters are just natural streaming hiccups, that's the nature of streaming after all, it's a real-time transmission of audio/video. If you *really* want to track it down, keep Performance Monitor logs and check your utilization of *all* resources. But IMO if this only happens once in a blue moon I don't think you're going to find anything conclusive.

 

[bradly1101]

What I meant is that hd homerun only talks to your htpc and not to the streaming clients. WMC serves the content out to your tablet or whatever.

if that is the case, you can isolate the traffic by configuring vlan. Vlan 1 is your regular network with nic1. Vlan 2 is nic 2 and the hd homeruns.

Oops. I think I was answering your other post when you wrote this. I wish that would work. I was hoping to leave it all up to the system to "load balance."

 

[bradly1101]

Bandwidth is like RAM: you can prioritize traffic, make VLANs, do all the NIC teaming you want, but it's not going to make a lick of performance difference unless you're already saturating what you have available.

Odds are those stutters are just natural streaming hiccups, that's the nature of streaming after all, it's a real-time transmission of audio/video. If you *really* want to track it down, keep Performance Monitor logs and check your utilization of *all* resources. But IMO if this only happens once in a blue moon I don't think you're going to find anything conclusive.

I'm sure you're correct. Sometimes I'll need to copy large files from this box to another over the same network connection, and although I've never seen a stutter directly caused by this, I wonder if during a hiccup in a prerecorded WMC stream (when I wouldn't have directly seen it) the network connection was saturated because of this.

 

[sdifox]

Does the stutter only happen on wifi client or do hardwired computer stutter as well?

 

[bradly1101]

Does the stutter only happen on wifi client or do hardwired computer stutter as well?

Well I've never had a stutter with local media (video, audio files), but occaisionaly there will be a stutter playing a prerecorded WMC TV file, but the stutter is embedded in the recording, which came off of one of the networked tuners. I'd say most of the traceable stutters (but not at all every time) in these files are during the six o'clock hour when all the tuners are busy recording news shows, which could mean something about the drive. I guess there could be other causes.

I think I have an old 1G intel NIC around here, I wonder if that could tell me if it's just a Realtek problem.

 

[sdifox]

There are still people recording news? What are smartphones for?

Humm, I think it might be wmc. Try to manually start six recordings and monitor reource usage, cpu, ram and network.

You are recording what kind of streams? Atsc or qam?

 

[bradly1101]

There are still people recording news? What are smartphones for?

Humm, I think it might be wmc. Try to manually start six recordings and monitor reource usage, cpu, ram and network.

You are recording what kind of streams? Atsc or qam?

There's a news junky in the house - lol

I'll try the resource monitoring - should have been my first step, at least I'll know where a bottle neck might come close to saturation.

It's cable. The shows are generally 1080i 29.97fps. But if I start copying a file from that machine, is it not going to grab all the B/W it can? I realize the video streams are going in and the file copy is coming out, but could that be an issue?

 

[sdifox]

There's a news junky in the house - lol

I'll try the resource monitoring - should have been my first step, at least I'll know where a bottle neck might come close to saturation.

It's cable. The shows are generally 1080i 29.97fps. But if I start copying a file from that machine, is it not going to grab all the B/W it can? I realize the video streams are going in and the file copy is coming out, but could that be an issue?

I know back when I was playing with atsc tuner and mythtv, it would hickup once in a while as well. And this was single tuner with nothing else happening in the box. Gigabit should not be the bottleneck, but it is realtek.

 

[bradly1101]

I know back when I was playing with atsc tuner and mythtv, it would hickup once in a while as well. And this was single tuner with nothing else happening in the box. Gigabit should not be the bottleneck, but it is realtek.

Thanks for all your input. I couldn't find my Intel NIC, but I'll keep an eye on things. Might get a dual-port NIC so I can upgrade in the future.

 

[DrDoug]

Thanks for all your input. I couldn't find my Intel NIC, but I'll keep an eye on things. Might get a dual-port NIC so I can upgrade in the future.

The Dell/Intel Pro 1000 PCIe Dual Port card is a great buy (some for $16 w/free ship on ebay now). The software package is excellent (testing, diagnostics, card configuration - link, failover, etc) and easy to use.

 

[Mushkins]

If the hiccup is happening in a recording of a live cable TV show via a tuner card, odds are the hiccup isn't even on your end and might just be a hiccup in the actual transmission of the show itself from the cable company.

You notice these sometimes when watching a show and you get a few frames of pixelation. Odds are the tuner cards are simply dropping the corrupted frames entirely.